The Official UKFF RAW Thread...

[MVP RULZ]

7 minutes ago, zep81 said:

So would Dixie appearing on TV be the catalyst for HHH/Steph to still come back soon then? They'll use that as a reason to go up against Angle? Just wondering what role Dixie will play. 

If it's Dixie that is. I'm still thinking it'll be Steph tbh.

If people are having a hard time with it being Dixie as it's not believeable after we've just seen his wife and kids on the doc, if it's Steph it's even more ridiculous on the believeabilty scale

[PunkStep]

45 minutes ago, MVP RULZ said:

If people are having a hard time with it being Dixie as it's not believeable after we've just seen his wife and kids on the doc

Yeah, I can't get my head around people saying this- forgetting the fact that wrestling isn't real and these are storylines.

Dixie showing up as an on-screen character would be hilarious. How bad was she as a character in TNA? Obviously as a business person she was downright abysmal, but is there value in her as an on-screen character beyond a small, brief 'OMG it's Dixie' moment? I hope she becomes assistant GM and on a weekly basis promises to make a HUGE announcement that turns out to be something shit, in true Dixie TNA fashion. That could be quite funny.

That Joe/Reigns/Brock segment was incredible, one of my favourite in-ring waffle segments in a long time. This entire feud/push has proved that Joe belongs at this level, man he's been fucking tremendous. Completely compelling both in the ring and on the mic, 100% believable in his role. As somebody else mentioned, the 'look at me when I'm talking to you' bit to Brock was ace and received the reaction from the crowd that it deserved.

[BomberPat]

Dixie is responsible for one of the worst live promos I've ever seen, wouldn't sell a single ticket, and would offer nothing to the product beyond a surprise moment that would appeal to the minority neckbeard audience and mean sweet fuck all to the vast majority, as well as likely forcing them to acknowledge TNA on TV to a far greater extent than they ever have. On top of that, I doubt she'd work cheap, so you'd piss off a lot of people that they'd bring in somehow who has absolutely no right to be there and nothing to offer the show making big money, over people working their arse off in developmental. I doubt we'll see her on TV at all.

Echo the love for Samoa Joe, though. I was never really a fan of him until he came to NXT, always felt he was missing something. But on the main roster he's been absolutely nailing it. The way he carries himself, and the way he speaks, he just seems so much more "real" and genuinely menacing than anyone else bar Lesnar. You just wouldn't fuck with him at all.

[tiger_rick]

I don't find it hard to believe it would be Dixie because of the doc but because she's an absolute nobody who had no talent whatsoever as an on screen performer. I'd prefer Claire Lynch.

[WeeAl]

Jesus I hope they don't go down the route of it being Dixie. Partly because you can count me in the group of people who could hardly pick her out of a line-up. It'll go down like a fart in church if that ends up being the big reveal.

[zep81]

"It's.............Dixie Carter............you know........the former owner of TN.....GF.....Impa.......well we can't really directly say, but she was involved in another wrestling company".

I havn't seen the Angle doc yet so I'm not sure how she was presented on that tho.

[PunkStep]

They showed an online article during the documentary where it says 'Kurt Angle signs with TNA' and Dixie referenced 'when he came to us'. I don't think they ever said TNA, but they clearly showed the name- which is their biggest acknowledgement yet of them.

[BomberPat]

5 minutes ago, PunkStep said:

They showed an online article during the documentary where it says 'Kurt Angle signs with TNA' and Dixie referenced 'when he came to us'. I don't think they ever said TNA, but they clearly showed the name- which is their biggest acknowledgement yet of them.

They've been acknowledged by name on Legends with JBL, when he interviewed Sting, as well. And possibly some other places, but always minor Network shows. This is probably the highest profile usage of it.

There's a huge difference between a Network show and RAW, though. Several wrestlers - Kevin Nash, Rob Van Dam and Christian all come to mind - have said that, while wrestling on TV every week for TNA, people would ask them, "why don't you wrestle any more?". The vast majority of the audience don't know what TNA is, and even fewer will know who Dixie Carter is, and fewer still will care. Throw in that she's a dreadful performer, and it would all but force them to acknowledge a promotion they have been rightly ignoring for over a decade, and where would they benefit?

I've seen people say "well, you never thought we'd see Eric Bischoff in WWE" - but the two are miles apart. Bischoff had the built-in story of having "almost run Vince McMahon out of business", he came in with name value and notoriety, from a promotion that was already dead (and that they owned the rights to) so they didn't have to worry about acknowledging his past and, crucially, he was a top-notch on-screen talent. He couldn't be further removed from Dixie Carter.

Whatever it is will lead to the rumoured Triple H/Angle match, surely, so it's far more likely to be MCMAHON DRAMA than sticking a nobody like Dixie on TV for the benefit of a single digit percentage of the audience.

[PunkStep]

Whoever it is, they're balls-deep in with it now seeing as Angle finished the phone call with 'I love you'.

[HarmonicGenerator]

2 hours ago, PunkStep said:

Whoever it is, they're balls-deep in with it now seeing as Angle finished the phone call with 'I love you'.

This makes me think it is in fact Vince on the other end of the line. At least once during the documentary Kurt mentioned Vince saying 'I love you' to him, and that he thought of Vince like a father. Vince might therefore think of Kurt like a son, a prodigal son come home. Together, they can eliminate the son-in-law, the usurper to Angle's true place at Vince's side, and he can rule with his son on SmackDown and his 'son' on Raw. Therefore, Vince/Kurt vs Triple H, and for added McMahon drama, Steph has to pick a side. 

Edited July 13, 2017 by HarmonicGenerator

[PSF]

Is it definitely an affair angle? Could it not be a his illegitimate child or something? Forgive me if I missed something as I only watch the highlights on youtube.

When did Stef and HHH have their first child? Does it tie into the love triangle?

Edited July 13, 2017 by PSF

[garynysmon]

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Several wrestlers - Kevin Nash, Rob Van Dam and Christian all come to mind - have said that, while wrestling on TV every week for TNA, people would ask them, "why don't you wrestle any more?". The vast majority of the audience don't know what TNA is, and even fewer will know who Dixie Carter is, and fewer still will care. Throw in that she's a dreadful performer, and it would all but force them to acknowledge a promotion they have been rightly ignoring for over a decade, and where would they benefit?

I've never understood that. Because if you were curious in the slightest at what they were upto, in this day and age, how long does it take to look someone up on Wikipedia? FFS, I spend hours of my working week looking up what obscure TV characters from my childhood are upto these days.

I'm not sure how you can say they've been "rightly ignored either." Because either TNA is/was so shit that you can reference them and take the piss as much as you want on TV, or they are regarded as something of a competition and you don't acknowledge them. Surely you don't purposely ignore something that you perceive to be laughably bad? 

The biggest offence is definitely the DVD documentary releases which pretend they sat on their arse at home the whole time they were working for Dixie and co.

Edited July 13, 2017 by garynysmon

[BomberPat]

I'm in the same boat as you, that if I'm interested in something, I'll check it out. But RAW for most people in the US isn't something they have to go out of their way to watch in the same way we do in the UK - it's 7 or 8pm habit viewing. There are plenty of people who'll stick the wrestling on the telly, never knowing there's anything else going on in wrestling outside of that show. That's the vast majority of the audience.

A few years back, there was a study/survey amongst WWE viewers that found that less than 3% of WWE viewers could name a single other wrestling promotion.

 

I mean rightly ignored simply from a business perspective - it does WWE no favours to mention them, so why do it? If you mention them you run the risk of either confusing/alienating your audience, or making them think "TNA, eh? What's that?" and going off and watching it. At the very least, by acknowledging them WWE are lending them credibility.

The old adage in advertising was that Subway will tell you why they're better than McDonalds, McDonalds don't need to tell you why they're better than Subway.

[garynysmon]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I mean rightly ignored simply from a business perspective - it does WWE no favours to mention them, so why do it? If you mention them you run the risk of either confusing/alienating your audience, or making them think "TNA, eh? What's that?" and going off and watching it. At the very least, by acknowledging them WWE are lending them credibility.

The old adage in advertising was that Subway will tell you why they're better than McDonalds, McDonalds don't need to tell you why they're better than Subway.

You make some good points. But they seem to acknowledge Ring of Honor and New Japan, which is my biggest bone of contention.  Granted, ROH etc played a part in the story of Daniel Bryan, but no more than TNA did with AJ Styles, Samoa Joe and arguably to a lesser degree, Sting.

Probably a conspiracy theory, but is Vince McMahon's grudge against Jeff Jarrett a factor in why they showcased Dixie all of a sudden?

Edited July 13, 2017 by garynysmon

[BomberPat]

I think they accept that ROH aren't competition - nor are TNA, but ROH have no real pretence about trying to be competition. If TNA are WCW, then ROH are ECW - the company that WWE are happy to blithely tolerate, knowing that they're not at risk of actively losing fans to them, and that their continued existence could actually benefit WWE more than running them out of business would, and knowing that throwing a bone to the hardcore fans by acknowledging them from time to time.

NJPW are in much the same boat, though I wouldn't be surprised to see that change if their US expansion gets much more ambitious than it already is.

 

Interesting point about Jarrett - I wouldn't have thought that's the case; I doubt Vince was particularly involved with the documentary, and Dixie's there because she played a substantial role in Kurt's story, but, at the same time, never put it past Vince McMahon to be a mad bastard making business decisions based on petty grudges.